Leaderboard

Page size is an important factor here. A paperback novel sized book is better one column per page. An 8.5x11 or larger handbook or text is usually better either two columns, or with lots of boxes and charts and graphics that break up the monotony. If a column of text gets too wide, then it's more difficult to track back from the end of one line and find where the beginning of the next is, instead of accidentally re-reading or skipping a line. It can be done, but it slows the reader down unnecessarily.

Fair warning to everyone: the opening shots in World War Tea have been fired.

Today's strip reminds me of a Darwin Awards tale... Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a holdup, and fired a few wild shots. The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, covered by several customers who also drew their guns, thereby removing the confused criminal from the gene pool. No one else was hurt. From this it may be inferred that if you have to rob a gun store, you had better be the Terminator.

9:09 p.m. CDT 20170818. I am home, and I seem to be okay. I'm a bit sore, and I will be for 3-5 days until the cortisone kicks in on the proper nerve endings. Thanks for the good wishes. I'm going back to sleep for now.

Pandora's dilemma definitely reminds me of Ashildr, from Doctor Who, a Viking girl who became immortal sort of by accident. Infinite lifespan, finite memory. She started keeping a journal with the most important things in her life, to re-read when she had forgotten who she used to be. It filled a respectably-sized library in her home and spilled out into the halls the second time the Doctor encountered her. There were places pages were stained with tears, places where pages had been torn out because she wanted to forget what those pages held. But she only knew what was in the diary as something she had read about. One wonders whether someone like that could actually learn the important lessons in life, or whether they too would be forgotten along with the details of how they were learned. Apparently she could, though, because the person who the Doctor met at the end of the universe was very different from the girl he saved from dying. They did something visually similar with Methos's diary in Highlander, kept since writing was invented, with parts of the diary on papyrus scrolls and cuneiform tablets. In that series, however, Immortals have excellent memories so I never really got the impression Methos needed the diary. From what Pandora and the Emissary of Magic said, it sounds like an Immortal only passes along what the most recent incarnation chooses to pass along. There isn't an ever-growing library of mental tomes. Or, if there is, the older ones must be much harder to access than the most recent one. Perhaps they're nested, like a hard drive archive with files for a previous archive that contains a previous archive which contains the recovered files from a crash which contains.... Hmm, wasn't there an xkcd on that? ....yup, there sure is!

I am not sure if my own reflexive reaction is any better. It leans towards gallows humour. At one time I fainted while having an injection of a drug needed so I could donate stem cells to my brother. I woke up on the floor with a very worried nurse trying to take my pulse while looking at her watch. I did the to my mind only logical thing, which was to quote Groucho Marx. "Either my watch has stopped or the patient is dead."

Then please tell her to go ahead. My wife will be pleased as well. She might return pictures of her Saki, mind you. Here is one of Saki on her new futon, which she graciously also allows her humans to use.

Oh dear. This reminds me of an old story. I was in the kitchen getting a bottle of Coke from the fridge. My old Burmese Catso (on sight nicknamed 'Fatso' by my wife, and instantly changed into 'Catso' by me, and stuck with that for the rest of his life) was doing the 'rub against Daddy's legs for attention' thing. But somehow when I opened the bottle it let out a loud hiss and poor Catso instantly fled, looking horrified. "Oh no! Daddy is mad at me! What did I do?" I had to find the poor thing and coax him out from under my bed to reassure him. He was a very sweet-tempered and gentle cat. Just not terribly bright.

It is very good to have you back. Keep us posted and I hope you feel better soon!

6:23 a.m. CDT 20170820. The last time I had this "procedure" done, I experienced the majesty of levels 9/10 and 10/10 when it comes to pain levels. Not. Even. Close. This time, I had hydrocodone still active in my system, at doctor's orders. This time, I had a doctor who used a targeting system and a catheter to put the medicine where it needed to go along my spine. This time, I had heavy metal music playing in the background and a doctor who wore something that looked straight out of Heavy Metal magazine as his scrubs, complete with goggles. I'd say that's a troika lined up for success. I think I'm already feeling some relief for the stone bruise pain on my foot. However, I'm still sore everywhere else. I think it's going to take the full five days for the steroids to kick in. Outside of that, I've got that painful spot on the cartilage of my ear which has not healed, despite my doctor's treatment. Makes it painful to lie on my pillow with my right side, and I'm still spotting blood. The basal cell carcinoma, if that is what it is, is still in full swing. Yep, I'm properly back from the hospital, me and all of my secondary ailments.

Not really a problem. Plus it's Pittsburg Kansas, not Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Quick pic: Loudmouth's roommate Baker, apparently melted from the Texas heat: I had to do some white balance adjustment and gamma correction to get the mud out of this picture. Irfanview 64 is such a wonderful program.

Wait. Not "suggest". "Imply" is the word I meant.

For the first time since we brought him inside, Loudmouth ate kitty snacks! He's always turned them down before. We've offered him the Cat-Man-Doo chicken snacks and whatever snacks are freeze dried raw (Baker wouldn't even touch the latter, and he's started barfing the former). Today, I tried the Orijen snacks. Baker loved them. Loudmouth wouldn't take them from my hand, but he did eat them off of the cushion in front of him. Result! The Orijen snacks had boneless chicken, boneless turkey, chicken liver, turkey liver, and boneless flounder (?) as their ingredients. Weird mix, but I'm not gonna argue as long as the cats eat it.

Out for 20 minutes with an hour and half recovery time is much better than out for 2 hours and 4+ hours recovery. Glad to hear that.

3:56 p.m. CDT 20170817. Whew. Just talked to Baylor Scott & White's Pain Management department and cleared up one rather big point. I'm not going to be unconscious for two hours tomorrow. I'm only going to be out for 20 minutes. I will be there for two hours, though, mostly in post-op as they make sure I'm in good shape after the procedure and don't have any spinal damage. It's still a scary thought, as tomorrow's 12:20 p.m. CDT appointment time approaches.

The simple fact that Immortals can lie to their future incarnations through these memoirs would imply they have some degree of control over what they pass on. If everything was automatically passed on in a proper death, then the lie would have been nigh-impossible to pull off(all it would have taken to break the lie is for an Immortal to check the memories after their elf child had a child) If an Immortal can choose what to pass on when they die, then they can leave out or generalize the more personal parts of their history if they so wish. Similar to how a human writing their memoirs can omit or alter details to be passed on to future generations. Also, we've seen that an Immortal has to actively reference the memoirs to get the information from them. They don't automatically know the contents. Though likely some information is automatically known after a proper death, otherwise the new Immortal wouldn't know how to reference the memoirs, as we saw when H&D didn't know how to reference their ancestral memories after an improper death.

Well, she accepted it, as long as it came from a nurse. We're switching back to 4x a day dosing, though. 4am/10am/4pm/10pm, if it works, 15mg per dose. That'll start tomorrow, because I've already taken my 20mg dose for this morning. Quite frankly, the nurse was perplexed at why I wasn't taking the full dose. I didn't get a chance to explain Mrs. Prof's paranoia over the whole thing. Besides, I'm only going to be at that level for two days prior to the procedure. I'm more scared over the procedure than I am over the medication, to be honest. She doesn't seem to be worried at all over the procedure.

I alternate, about 2 to 3 in favor of tea bag, but I do enough loose leaf tea that my tea canisters are a major part of my food storage area. At least here. I've been told that the new place has a huge amount of counter and cabinet space, enough that my sister in law, who has been my eyes on this project is jealous about the kitchen's space. More on that after I've seen the place.

Time for someone to express horror at advocating tea in bags instead of loose-leaf, so we can get the Brits to fight each other....

I am disappointed. I had expected something with more gunslinger duels and cattle rustling.

Well, the dishwasher is chanting again, so there is that.

Oh my god. I'm so exhausted. My work schedule this past month has been insane; you have no idea. Anyway, I have leisure time again. Let's git 'r done. Mon. Jul. 24, 2017 Tedd: 703 Pandora: 100 (12th) Wed. Jul. 26, 2017 Pandora: 101 Tedd: 704 Fri. Jul. 28, 2017 Pandora: 102 Tedd: 705 Mon. Jul. 31, 2017 Tedd: 706 Pandora: 103 Grace: 799 Mr. Verres: 130 Wed. Aug. 2, 2017 Tedd: 707 Fri. Aug. 4, 2017 Pandora: 104 Tedd: 708 Mon. Aug. 7, 2017 Pandora: 105 Tedd: 709 Fri. Aug. 11, 2017 Tedd: 710 Pandora: 106 Mon. Aug. 14, 2017 Pandora: 107 Wed. Aug. 16, 2017 Pandora: 108 Fri. Aug. 18, 2017 Pandora: 109 Mon. Aug. 21, 2017 Comically Evil Guy: 1st (only) appearance* ???: ??? *I know I said I wasn't going to list characters who were obviously one-offs, but come on. How could I not? FULL COUNT:

7:58 a.m. CDT 20170822. Okay, how the hell did I wake up with a sore throat? It feels like a damned infection, but it could be my allergies kicking in again. I'm drinking my protein coffee to try and put it out of my misery. I've also given my nose an Afrin spray to blast out whatever is in there out of there. Not having a fun morning. Found a well-hidden container of cranberry juice in the pantry. Am now mixing it with my tea to get that extra vitamin C burst for my throat. Last night's disaster with the ice cube pick-up has mostly dissipated. I won't be trying that again for at least the next week. Had to play a Daft Punk song to exorcise a Christmas song out of my head. That could be the worst of the symptoms from this morning.

Even before Edward was approached by Will and Gill, Tedd had some "strange interests" that made Edward believe that the TFG would be very tempting for Tedd to use. You know...the more I look at this page, the more I wonder if Edward's behaviour isn't so much that he's being transphobic, but being worried about how others might treat Tedd should they find out about his gender swapping. We know Tedd was worried about what Elliot thought about it and at one point Tedd had a reason to think that. Elliot didn't understand back then why Tedd did it, heck Tedd didn't really understand either, it's quite possible that Edward also doesn't understand, but is thinking more "big picture" in terms of when Tedd is out of high school, going to college, getting a job, etc, and how people might treat him if they knew. It'd be weirdly similar to when Nanase was trying to explain being gay to Akiko, she didn't want to give Akiko ideas about liking girls because she was worried about Akiko going through what her and Justin did. It doesn't make Edward's behaviour about it right, but I am still hopeful that it can be worked out if someone starts really talking about it, whether Edward initiates it himself, or Tedd goes to him, or Grace or Elliot, or even Pandora.

If he could, Immortals would be in open war with this kind of aberration and Pandora would be force-reset for letting him live. IMHO. The kind of rules they set up suggest they don't have any real enemy ; the gods or whatever Mantle of Heka is might be similarly powerful but likely don't fight with fairies based on some agreement (which may or may not be magically binding) and anyone else would be too weak to kill them. Or at least that's what they believe.

Sounds like a very good sign. You know for sure that it's play when they both initiate it and yet are friends after. If you realize that Loudmouth just pounced on Baker, they wrestled, and then they wound up on the bed together, that's a good sign they've become friends. Sometimes one cat will claim a resource, and as long as the other doesn't push for access to that resource, they get along just fine. It may be that Loudmouth will end up with the winning claim to other resources, such as a sunny window or a favorite spot on the bed. Other resources they may share, with the understanding that one of them gets it first. There's a lot of give and take with two cats learning to live with each other, just like with human roommates. Bob stops leaving wet towels on the floor, Fred starts putting the toilet paper on so it goes over the top instead of along the wall, Bob does his dishes quicker and Fred stops leaving the lights on in every room all night....they figure things out either by fighting over them or, more often, just by seeing who's more determined about it, who cares more, who's willing to fight if it comes to that. The hissing should get less frequent as time goes by and they sort things out,. You only just started giving him the anxiolytic, right? And they're still in the stressful part of the relationship, where they don't really know each other well enough to know what to expect or how far they can push things. I wouldn't give up yet. Keep treating every spot with an enzyme cleaner, though, so you get rid of any lingering smells that might draw him back to the same spot! Surely it should be a stuffed bunny that would be dubbed Scarlette O'Hare! ETA: Or, perhaps, an airplane, Scarlette O'Hare, here in Chicagoland....

I couldn't find Moon Pies or Starfruit, but I brought to work Sun Chips, Sunkist, Eclipse and Orbit gum, Celestial Seasonings zinger, and Milky Way minis.

The Eclipse, like all the other people. This is the cool effect you get via tree shadows during one.

Mrs. Prof will happily provide more of those when she has time. She'll be pleased as punch, in fact.

Belt and suspenders. I approve.

I do use one of those, actually. However, I have a USB mouse sitting behind my laptop, just in case I need it for an emergency.

We know the joke. There's a Pittsburg in Texas, too.

One last Close-Up Foundation item: In 1981, another schoolmate and I were scheduled to represent the Soviet Union on the International Court of Justice, regarding a case between Chile and Argentina. Now, for one day of the 1980 Close-Up tour, our group was scheduled to be split, with my half going somewhere and the other half going to meet the head of the Organization of the American States! I finagled my way onto that half so I could ask the head what the group's standing was on the dispute, which was over who should own the Beagle Islands at the tip of South America in Cape Horn. The answer I got wasn't very helpful (he wasn't too prepared for something like it from a group of high schoolers), but still, I got to talk to the man at the head of the Organization of American States!

Mrs. Prof managed to get a pill down Loudmouth's gullet tonight without my help (of which I wouldn't have been any). I think she scruffed him, but I'm not sure. I think this is either pre-scruff or post-scruff tonight. Not sure which.

Well yeah, I would imagine that after a while Pandora would again get to the point where her power and knowledge will result if boredom, and it's quite possible she could then do another "refresh" I don't think that the reason that Immortals decided to go the route of "abandonment of self" style reset because it was risky to do otherwise. They probably decided to do it so they didn't have to carry any emotional burdens throughout their lives. Pandora is a good example, she fell in love with Blaike who then was killed later, she could have reset and her next life wouldn't have to mourn at all. Maybe most Immortals chose to avoid getting emotionally involved with mortals because it would be too much temptation to not reset, but at the same time, living as long as they can and having everyone they ever cared about live, grow old, and die would probably still take it's toll on them despite "refreshing" their power. So it's really a matter of "Go insane with boredom and power?" or "go into a depression over everyone you've ever cared about dying which might probably lead you to just resetting completely anyway?" Immortals probably figured just reset anyway and avoid both situations.

8:00 a.m. CDT 20170819. I hate waking up from procedures. Thank you for your good wishes on making this one a good wake-up. I'm still woozy and still surprised that this was the only wheelchair-optional hospital I've ever been to. It was quite a walk to the car, and getting in wasn't easy at all. Can't sit up long on this one. Will stay in touch. Thanks for all you've done.

Sleep well, old friend. And get better.

Surprisingly, more than one shapeshifter can exist.

I think "trickster" primarily. In that mode she wasn't "bad" per se.... But humor, especially practical joke sort of humor is hard to pull off without some cruelty. Which in turn often requires some indifference to the object of the prank. I'd like to credit Blaike with putting Pandora in touch with her empathy. Maybe Pandora's experience with Blaike was enough to bring about a change to basic nature. I expect we'll find out eventually.

Much appreciated. I'm driving Mrs. Prof a bit spare at the moment with my worrying. I get the feeling a Zofran emergency will be called for tonight. Two hours of back procedure. Not fun. Complete with wings on the finger? Now, that I can relate to! I can make a pinhole camera. At the very least, there's the Science channel's coast-to-coast coverage.

Same here. We'll be crossing our fingers, sending good vibes, whatever we can do to encourage the fickle finger of fate to favor you! ;-) And hey, you've got the eclipse to look forward to afterwards, right? Even a partial is cool enough to look forward to! Got glasses or pinhole camera ready? Figured out a way to either get to the right window or maybe even go outside near the peak? Or, worst case, found a live feed from somewhere in the path of totality you can watch if you're not up to going out?

I don't know why but I actually kind of enjoy thunderstorms as long as I am indoors. Of course, that isn't when I am actually trying to sleep. :/

I think it closes the loop on the internal dialogue with what amounts to a decision by all of Pandora, not just the two subsets represented by Empathy and Chaos. If you track the sequence, when Tedd leaves, the dialogue starts as Empathy appears, followed by Chaos. What's particularly fine about this whole sequence is that it combines aspects of multiple personalities and the devil/angel-on-your-shoulders trope without being limited by either conceit. What I came away with was the sense that this is an abstract representation of Pandora's inner process, what the roiling, unstable emotional core of her looks like when it looks inward. Empathy and Chaos are not at war, they are having a discussion, indeed, they finish each others sentences at a few points. The shift back to Pandora actual at the end signifies resolution and decision in a very neat, show you don't tell you way that adds dimension and tone to what is being conveyed.

The important lessons are the ones we tend to NOT forget. Humans don't forget the oldest stuff first, they forget the least important stuff first. Based on the "passing lies" possibility, the most recent incarnation can definitely choose to edit what is to be passed, but it seems that USUALLY they doesn't. I don't think there is any hard limit on how big the "library" can be, but USUALLY the most recent incarnation keeps the amount relatively small ... and it's also possible the next incarnation can choose to not read everything immediately or skip the boring parts. Does it MEAN anything, though? Are there really distinct Pandora's sub-personalities (similar to Susan's logic and curiosity) or was it just for reader's convenience? I think Adrian already knows how to defuse the dam. However, she may need to tell him WHERE. Anyway, yes ; while she seem to reach conclusion that attempt to do reset might be better than not, I definitely don't see her doing it so fast. I would also expect that she would WARN at least Sarah and probably also Adrian about that. Yes ... although maybe she WILL somehow manage to keep the emotional ties regardless.

Your vet is better suited than I am to decide that, but it sounds like it's definitely worth a phone call to see what they think!

Dan = sneaky I didn't see it until about the fourth time I read this strip, the Pandora who speaks at the end is the one who has been standing silent in the background throughout.

Shamelessly stolen for game use.

Also how could one not involve the Hammer Queen in the forging of a new hammer artifact.

I think you're right, especially given the fact that they are sterile and the way they keep decapitating one another on a semi-regular basis.